


a crush on you

by dizzy



Series: we're all dying anyway 2019 daily fic advent [9]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21781189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: Prompt:Phan with Dan as stalker(aka, a 2009 fic)
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: we're all dying anyway 2019 daily fic advent [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559167
Comments: 13
Kudos: 122





	a crush on you

Phil's spaced out on the world, ignoring reality in favor of the things he can make and control all by himself. 

He does that sometimes. He just gets lost in his own head, sometimes in fantasy worlds where he saves the day or one of his university professors tells him he's actually the most brilliant filmmaker of his time or a big Hollywood studio sees a video on his youtube channel and offers him a contract. 

But sometimes they're more like... daydreams. Less grandiose, more little moments he's yearning for tucked in close to his heart. 

Those happen a lot lately. He's sure it has something to do with the fact that he's finished with uni in another couple of months and he's got no idea what happens on the other side. He doesn't want to leave York and the safety and structure of school. He doesn't particularly want to step out into the big scary world. 

Part of it is not having a job and knowing there's so much expectation on him. But it's also just... being alone. Losing his friends, losing the familiarity of all the places in this town he knows, all the familiar faces. Patterns and routines, bonds made out of proximity that grew into something more genuine. 

He tells himself it's exactly how he felt after college, too. That he survived it then, so he'll survive it now - that feeling of the group around him splintering and fragmenting all over the country, maybe the world. 

So he lies in the dark at night and he listens to the creak of this house he shares with too many people and takes paths down the overgrown forests of his mind, pretending there's a person whose hand he can hold and whose eyes follow him with warmth and promise. 

He dreams about stopping by a river stream and saving a family of rabbits and wading up to his shins the way he used to do with Martyn when they'd go off exploring on family trips. 

His mental movie fades into blurry scenes and then into sleep, a restless nap with half-finished dreams that leave him feeling unfulfilled when he rubs the sleep from his eyes. 

It's only half eleven. He goes into the kitchen and gets a snack, pilfered biscuits and a glass of milk. He's not quite ready to get back to sleep, so he hauls his laptop onto his thighs. 

Phil's video comments come as emails, collecting like little time bombs in his inbox all throughout the day, every day. He saves them because it's exciting, mostly; a bit of danger mixed in, since there's always some properly awful ones too. But they're mostly good and he likes the feeling like he's earned the right to open them just by making it through a day. 

Tonight they're mostly good. He lets the praise wash over him, soothing the frayed edges of all those looming insecurities. 

He might not have a boy to hold hands with in the forest, but he's got this. He's got people that like him and think he's brilliant and... well, a few that want to do some specifically naughty things with him. Mostly not people he'd want to do those things with, but a few... 

Phil shifts in bed as he sees a string of comments all by the same name, a boy this time. He's left a comment on what looks like every single video he'd uploaded from his most recent interactive story. Phil reads through each one like he's savoring something precious, and he's sad when he reaches the last comment in the string.

Dan Howell. Phil wonders idly if Dan is a boy who’d want to hold hands with another boy in the middle of somewhere great and far away. Phil can't help that he views the world through that lens sometimes - everyone is a potential something until proven otherwise. He hopes for the nice kind of potential and prepares himself for the disappointing, sometimes dangerous, sort. 

And by that logic, Dan Howell is probably a fifty year old man from Belgium, or an actual kid in the creeptastic way. 

It's just... 

They're really nice comments. They're all the things Phil desperately wants someone to say to him, and mean. 

Phil shuts his laptop and puts it on the floor, then rolls over and buries his face in his pillow and groans. He's tired of being a person for today. He shuffles his body until he's under his duvet and then stretches his arms out to the sides and lets them fall over the sides of the bed. 

He tries to coax himself back to sleep, to that blissful space before he's got to be a person again, with the words _I think I have a crush on you_ curled just so in the back of his mind.


End file.
